In defense of Dana Rohrabacher

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A lot of you may not know much about this obscure California congressman.  He’s been around DC for a while.  He’s in the Walter Jones — Thomas Massie — Justin Amash camp on a lot of issues that come before the House.  When his name popped up on the radar as a potential secretary of state for Donald Trump, many faux news drive by heads started to explode.  We started to get pieces like THIS painting Rohrabacher as a nut.

I couldn’t disagree more with that take. Rohrabacher is right in line with an awful lot of what those of us who fought in the trenches for so many years for Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and Donald Trump have held dear.

  •  An honest-to-goodness Reaganite.  Rohrabacher was with Reagan before that was even considered cool.  He fought on his behalf in California, and came to Washington with him when he got elected president.  Since being elected to the US House in the 80s, Rohrabacher has been raising hell against the growth of government and the excesses of our capital city. (That was a time when California was still sending real conservatives to DC — like Bill Dannemeyer and Bob Dornan.)  Drivebys like to poo-poo him for never having held a committee chairmanship.  To me, that is a plus.  Gaining a committee chairmanship these days means you have to cut off your cojones and place them in leadership’s testicle lockbox.  You answer to Paul Ryan, not your voters back home. 
  • A conservative warrior. Unlike many elected conservatives these days, Rohrabacher has been devoted to nurturing the next generation of conservatives.  He was long active in Young Americans for Freedom, an organization founded in the 1960s by the great William F. Buckley, to counteract the increasingly wussified College Republicans.   (As a student at DC’s George Washington University, I was active in CRs and YAF.  Rohrabacher would regularly visit with our YAF chapter, advise us, and serve as a mentor.  He, Dornan, and Dannemayer regularly interacted with our YAF chapter and provided may of our members with internships in their Hill offices.) 
  • An actual warrior.   Some of the faux news crowd is trying to paint Rohrabacher as a tool of the Russian government.   They “conveniently” leave out the fact that Rohrabacher went into combat against the Russian military during their 1980s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.  Rohrabacher has become a huge critic of our policies in that region.  He says a centralized government, like ours, will never work in that place.  Instead, he advocates for regional, tribal governments.
    (I know a number of Special Ops snake-eater types from Fort Bragg, who happen to live nearb.  They’ve seen Afghanistan first-hand quite a bit.  All of them I’ve talked to admit it is FUBAR, thanks in a large part to the way DC has handled it.  So, it’snot exactly a hippie, leftist POV.)
  • Rohrabacher’s BFF is SAMMY HAGAR.   (How cool is THAT?)  From what I understand, their relationship goes back to their days as roommates in college.  I heard a story, while in DC that Hagar, and then-bandmate Eddie Van Halen, showed up at Rohrabacher’s birthday party to provide a surprise happy-birthday serenade and jam session.  

I, for one, would not lose ANY sleep over the idea of Secretary of State Dana Rohrabacher.  I think he fits in perfectly with Trump’s shake-it-up agenda.